Looking for a creative way to introduce the body systems in Anatomy? Try a Gallery Walk!

The first unit in Anatomy & Physiology is HUGE…. I mean really huge!! So, I decided to try something different to really get my students engaged and ready to tackle what is often a very difficult course. This year, we used a Gallery Walk for the body systems!

What did we do?

Each student group took on the roles of medical students who were asked to present information about their particular body system to patients at our “Medical Clinic”. They were responsible for creating a life-sized body from templates that I drew (Side note: At one point I wanted to create a life-sized foldable body for my Anatomy classes so I had many organs & the outlines already drawn. I have pretty much finished it now because I have seen what an awesome learning tool it is for my Anatomy kids! Hopefully, I’ll get it uploaded to TpT pretty soon).

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Here is the main part of their project requirements:

As you can see, I gave them guidelines, yet also gave them a chance to make their project meaningful to their classmates. I collected the 3 questions each group wrote down about their own body system and typed them up for everyone to use during the Gallery Walk. My kids loved it! The groups then discussed their body system and everyone checked their answers. Here’s a part of one class’ questions:

I did this Gallery Walk as the last station of my review station lab for Unit 1. Within the stations, they played “You be the Doctor” card game (that I made up lol~ They loved it!), as well as creating anatomical planes with pipe cleaners on my little skeleton. They even played a game of Operation (the old board game that buzzes) where they had to remove the “organs” in a certain order according to the description (using anatomical terms). Their favorite station was my light sabers (thank goodness for Amazon) where they had to cut their lab partner into specific anatomical planes. My classes did very well on their Unit 1 Exam. I’ll definitely use this again next year! Here are some pictures of their systems: